Up until now I have been using my Onboard Sound Card - ALC1200(Realtek). It suppose to be quite decent according to reviews (I'm mainly using it with Headphones).More technical information about it can be found here.

Recently I purchased a set of new headphones that comes with a USB Soundcard: Steelseries USB Dongle. Technical information can be found here.

Few questions based on the above:1. Is any one of them significantly better than the other (spec-wise)?2. Does Onboard card getting Amp on the way out by the motherboard? What about the USB soundcard?

I tried to compare them using my ears, but the time it takes me to unplug and plug everything again (and change the output device in Windows) just takes too much for me to 'Remember' how to previous sounded. Or perhaps it just the difference was not that major for me to notice.

Would the Headphones port be more 'Safe'?When the volume was around 2/3, the difference between the USB and the Headphones are indeed similar like shown below:

But between 2/3 volume and Volume at max, the sound get very unstable on the USB Sound card compare to the Onboard Headphones port:

What I meant by being 'Safe', is that some Audio will require me to play around with the Volume, this 'limitation' will make it unpossible to reach the unstable state. Right?That in case that indeed there is no real benefit in using either the usb or headphones audio and quality wise.